slowly getting there some more questions

I put 160 item in my store then found out that you must have a weight. for the shipping total to come up. My shipping is base off the total of the order not weight Is their a easy way to fix this. other then going and putting 0.01 in all of my item. Also I found the file to edit the shipping and return but it said I can not write to this file any help will great. P.S. I want to thank every body for their help this Forum and some of the others were great help I will have more question to come very green at this any suggestion. On were and how to do PHP And anything that go with it like how to edit and other thing I down load Triad on my other computer but can't get apache to run any help would be great once again thank you